EPISODE 76 — Weird Ways Repeating Sounds Hack the Human Mind

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Why is it that if you hear a pop song like "I Kissed A Girl" more than two or three times, you feel like you're going insane, but when you play an old video game you can listen to the music for hours? Some of the song loops from Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog are only around a minute long, yet they never annoy or distract as you try to finish a level.

 

The brain does weird things in response to repetition. As you'll hear in the episode, a UCSD professor found that if you hear a repeating loop of almost any series of spoken words, your mind will begin to hear that input as music.

 

This week on the podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Dan O'Brien and Alex Schmidt to discuss how the human mind seeks out repetition, turns that repetition into music, and how video games have turned this science into an unsung art form.

[ChrisDeKleine 0]

This was a cool one! I just watched Spring Breakers with James Franco and thought the movie felt like a song because of how much certain lines and clips were repeated. "Spring Breaaaak. Spring Breaaaaak. Spring Break forever."

[jackstar7 108]

For visual repetition, early Aronofsky movies. While not examples of what you're describing in the episode, still has an almost lyrical element to it.

 

Good talk, gentlemen.

 

 

EDIT: Gah, didn't realize you'd wind up discussing Wright. There you have it.

[VinsanityV22 500]

Dan, this quote from one of your recent, hilarious, Pop Culture Disorder videos on Youtube is doing weird stuff to my brain when I listen to it a lot. I figured I'd share it with all of you guys

 

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0yp0pa5JpU2